This question has been bouncing around.  I first started with asking the Media Center team, and now I've been referred here.

Are there any plans to add support for viewing RAW images that have a WIC codec in Vista Media Center?  When a codec is installed, you can view the images in Explorer and Photo Gallery, but Media Center doesn't seem to know about WIC.

If not, what is the way to add support for static image types in Media Center?  Most of the documentation is aimed at application development, but documentation on extending core functionality is hard to find.  My guess is that this would involve working with DirectShow and figuring out the registry bits that Media Center uses for codec discovery.  Is there an alternative to doing a DShow to WIC bridge?

Ardfry:

This question has been bouncing around.  I first started with asking the Media Center team, and now I've been referred here.

Are there any plans to add support for viewing RAW images that have a WIC codec in Vista Media Center?  When a codec is installed, you can view the images in Explorer and Photo Gallery, but Media Center doesn't seem to know about WIC.

If not, what is the way to add support for static image types in Media Center?  Most of the documentation is aimed at application development, but documentation on extending core functionality is hard to find.  My guess is that this would involve working with DirectShow and figuring out the registry bits that Media Center uses for codec discovery.  Is there an alternative to doing a DShow to WIC bridge?

This is something I have been frustrated about for a long time as well! It's sad that there hasn't been an official response from Microsoft about this.

 

Unfortunately there is no way to display RAWs in Vista MCE because it doesn't use WIC.  This is something we're looking to fix in our next release.

noahsw:

Unfortunately there is no way to display RAWs in Vista MCE because it doesn't use WIC.  This is something we're looking to fix in our next release.

I really would love to see this feature in MCE

So that was over a year ago...still no support?  This is making me have to move to another media center solution which I didnt want to have to do.

I am runing Vista Ultimate and it looks like if my canon CR2 raw files are not supported I will have to look elsewhere for my media center solution.  I just want to see my photos on my TV. 

I can view them in all the other Windows products (windows explorer, photo gallery, Media Player) why not media center. It makes no sense.

Is there an update out that I dont know about or do we keep waiting?  Your reply was from January 2008 and this feature has been begged for long before then.

Thanks for your reponse.

 

Have you tried the Win7 RC?

noahsw:

Have you tried the Win7 RC?

I've been meaning to try this.  I just did.

Other than being painfully slow due to VMWare not being able to support the video driver capabilites that Media Center needs on Windows 7, it does appear to use WIC (via WPF?) to show RAW files (as well as WIC support you might have installed for image files) in Media Center.

Thank you for delivering this.

 

David Blake

Ardfry Imaging, LLC